Change
by Ankh-Ascendant
Summary: Sesshoumaru watches the world below and reflects.


_TITLE: Change  
CHAPTER: oneshot (long drabble)  
AUTHOR: Ankh Ascendant ( setosgirl0 / neferseti0 )  
DATE: 9-11-09  
FANDOM: Inuyasha  
DISCLAIMER: I don't own Inuyasha, or make any money from it.  
PAIRINGS: none  
TYPE: Introspection  
RATING: G  
WARNINGS: no warnings  
OCs: none  
BETA: none  
WORDS: 666  
SUMMARY: Sesshoumaru watches the world below and reflects.  
NOTES: This was written from a prompt (a t .com). This prompt was "Earth"._

* * *

_Change_

Clouds swirl around me, each a cold wet veil that hangs heavy in the air up here and clings to my skin, parting only grudgingly as I pass through them. Below the edge of the stairs they stretch away in a near-unbroken sheet that looks almost solid, but that I can see is moving very slightly if I watch it.

I stand on the edge of last step before nothingness and will them to part. They obey me slowly, drifting away from each other and breaking apart, for now. The breaks show me slivers of the world below.

I am always startled when I see it now. I am used to green, and wood, and natural curves, and instead I see harsh metal and glass, throwing back the sunlight with straight sides and unforgiving corners. Black rivers cut swathes through the green, flowing with tiny metal specks that occasionally toss back the light.

Human cities have grown and spread like a wildfire, or like a poison infecting the land. Black pushes back the green and invades every corner. There is still green, of course, but I find it impossible to find a view without the black.

Normally I don't look.

The world has changed more in the last hundred and fifty years than in the rest of my life together. That is no longer a world for youkai, it is a world for man and machine. Lesser youkai are all either killed or in hiding, skulking in the shadows that skirt this perfect age of reason.

And I? I suppose I am hiding as well. Hiding from the stench of their mechanical world and the instability of their 'progress'. Everything changes at such a speed... Even they don't know what they are anymore. There is no place even for so many of their own. If a human who has been alive merely fifty years no longer understands the world...

It is easier to watch it pass from here. Easy to remember how small and unimportant they are, when they look so small and unimportant. I have not seen a human in a very long time... their vehicles are like insects and their buildings are like playthings from here, and they are completely invisible. I prefer it this way. It is still impossible to pretend they don't exist, but it is easy to remember that they will pass. Eventually they will be gone, while I will still remain.

...There are not many things that can say that.

There is nothing around me that has yet to change or disappear. My mother has left, disillusioned with the humans' world, and might be dead by now – I have her castle, and it has been my home for over a century. Jaken has died, as lesser youkai eventually do. My father, of course, died long ago.

Sometimes I wonder about Inuyasha. I suppose he could still be living, albeit very old... but I doubt it. He is almost certainly dead. He has a knack for trouble, and there have been very troubling times... Nor do I see him adapting well to this new, human world.

Any more, I suppose, than I have.

Any more than I have any desire to.

I let the clouds close again and cover the earth in their pure white illusion; they may not be solid, a truly separate world, but they are good enough for me. There is not a word for me beneath them, and I don't have any desire to see what it has become. With the clouds standing a weak but impenetrable shield between me and it, I can ignore it.

Until the next time I check, in the... I can't say 'hope', but in the futile desire for it to have reverted a few centuries. I will be disappointed again, by the ever growing black webs, and expanding metal cities, and fierce reflections of glass.

And then, as now, I will turn my back on it and I will wait.

_~end~_


End file.
